Soft Target

by Stephen Hunter

  “Mike,” another major told him on the secure tactical radio channel, “the colonel wants you back here. He’s also pulling all the SWAT guys back and bringing in a fleet of buses.”

  “What?” said Jefferson. “Are you nuts? What the fuck?”

  “Hey, Mike,” said his colleague, “don’t blow at me. It’s the colonel’s decision. We’re going to let this thing play out. You heard, they’ve made demands, we’re acceding to those demands, and they’re going to let the hostages go, maybe within the hour. Any sign of offensive action against them and they could open up and take out dozens, maybe hundreds, of hostages. You’re to stand down, return to Incident Command, and return your shooters to their original units.”

  “And what happens if after it’s all done, and the Kaafi assholes are on their way to freedom and glory, this motherfucker still opens up on the hostages? Only this time, we have no way to get to them in minutes and they just kill and kill and kill while we’re blowing doors?”

  “It’s not our decision, Mike. It’s the colonel’s call and the consensus up and down the line is that it’s a good one. Media’s gone nuts about him. He’s their guy, he’s the hero, he’s the winner. That’s the narrative. Suppose you go in, set up underneath just in case, and one of your people drops a forty-five and it goes off, and the bad guys panic and start blasting.”

  “These are trained men. Nobody is going to drop a forty-five. Plus, forty-fives don’t work like that. Plus, we all carry Glocks or Sigs.”

  “Mike, just bring it back, okay? We’ll make a note of your objections, that’s the best I can do.”

  Jefferson announced the decision to his all-star SWAT group and got from them what he had given to the other major: disbelief, anger, a sense of something important slipping away.

  “If you let these guys get away with this,” somebody said, “it’s open season on America all over the world. We have to fight them now and kill them now. That’s our responsibility.”

  “Are you suggesting a revolution?” said Mike. “You want us to go rogue? You realize what that means? End of all careers, for a start. Possible legal action because without formal authorization, we’re just vigilantes. I’m talking prosecution, fines, maybe prison time. You want to do hard time after all the skells you’ve busted? You wouldn’t last three nights in the showers and your ass would get royally fucked before your throat was cut.”

  So that was it.

  Walk back to their units, join the pullback, make way for the buses, hope that the colonel and all the heads on suits had made the right call, and if they hadn’t, go in afterward and supervise the forensics and the janitorial.

  “Tell you what,” said Jefferson. “Let’s go real slow. Now obviously we’re not going in underground, but some of you guys have door-breaching rounds for your shotguns, right?”

  There were a few yeses from the assembled crew of helmeted guys with MP5s, ARs, and Rem 870s.

  “Okay, I’ll play for time. Meanwhile, I want you guys to chamber your breaching rounds. If it goes down, we’re only fifty yards from that set of doors”—he gestured to an entryway boasting the name NORTHEAST, where one township’s SWAT people were withdrawing—“and we can get to the doors, breach them fast, and get into the fight maybe not in five seconds but maybe in one minute.”

  “Mike, I have a better idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  The man explained. Then he said, “And it’s not quite a revolution. More of a coup d’état.”

  “No,” said Mike, smiling, “it’s a coup de SWAT.”

  _______________

  McElroy had found him another target. Still on the second floor, Ray was rotating another corridor to the left, moving down the outer ring toward Hudson, when he heard the sound of the shots.

  He recoiled, thought someone had seen him, was shooting at him, and rolled backward, slipping the rifle off his back, knowing he was behind the curve and would take one in the head soon. But the shots were ragged, not a volley, more spontaneous, and he realized that they were echoing down the hallways from the wide-open amusement park where the hostages were being held. Then he heard this other thing, this animal thing, he wasn’t sure what it was, some kind of crowd noise, a hubbub, a roar, a vibration. It communicated . . . joy. Well, excitement, maybe relief. It was, of course, the sound of a thousand people letting out their breaths involuntarily, as if they’d just gotten the good news. It was somehow the opposite of mass dread; it was mass undread.

  Ray waited for it to die down. He was puzzled but alert. He settled back into his scuttling position, ready to proceed, waiting for some kind of cue to suggest a path, a course, a possibility and, seeing none, decided to continue on plan.

  He moved ahead, slowly, his eyes scanning for motion. Nothing. It was quiet. Ray rounded the corner under the window into a bright, still-lit retail space called DSW Shoe Warehouse and peered down Hudson to the atrium space. This angle afforded him a close-up view of the log flume ride, and the smell of chlorine, from the heavily disinfected waterway, reached his nostrils, recalling the pool on the Subic Bay Naval Base of his childhood and the many summer days he’d spent there. He wondered absently what had happened to the installation since the Navy closed it down. Then he got his war brain back, excoriated himself for taking a little mental vacation in the middle of a combat zone, and started to scoot ahead, hoping he’d reach the railing before whatever gunman was lounging there had gotten bored with his cigarette break and taken off.

  But then—the vibration of his phone.

  Always at the wrong time! Jesus Christ, don’t call me, goddammit, Molly.

  But it wasn’t Molly.

  “Sergeant, this is McElroy. We just got the news. We’re to stand down. They reached some kind of agreement, we’re going to pull back, the hostages will be released as soon as the plane takes off—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “A deal, a deal. We’re sending some supposedly ‘political’ Somali prisoners back, they’ll let the hostages go.”

  Fuck, Ray thought. It went against everything he believed in. If you don’t stand up to them, you embolden them. You teach them that we’ll quit and it only makes them hungrier and crazier and the killing goes on and on. You fought wars to win or you didn’t fight them at all.

  “Do you hear me, Sergeant? Please acknowledge.”

  “Fuck,” said Ray.

  “It means you too. They’re very worried at Incident Command that some kind of accident or some guy not getting the word could queer the whole deal. So you have to cease operating. You’d best pull into a store, take the rest of the day off, and we’ll let this play out. Then we’ll come and get you.”

  “Ray,” came a new voice, “Memphis here, listening in. Obobo thinks he’s got it done, you have to do what Five is telling you. Let it cool.”

  “Suppose these guys don’t play fair,” said Ray. “I’ve had five tours fighting these guys and I know they can look you in the eye and give you total sincerity from the bottom of their hearts and be lying like a son of a bitch, and to them, lying to an infidel isn’t a lie, it’s a gesture of love for Allah.”

  “We have our order,” said McElroy.

  “Ray, yours not to reason why, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn’t sit right with me either, but—”

  “Are they choppering you guys out?” Ray asked McElroy.

  “Nobody’s said anything yet.”

  “You have any demolition there?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay, listen to me. You have to have a contingency. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Listen to him, Five,” said Nick.

  “You have to be able to blow a hole in that window.”

  “That’s fine to say but—”

  “You have to be able to blow a hole in that window. You squad with the other snipers, you figure out something, just in case, to get through that fucking window fast and start taking people down. You may have just seconds to engage. Solve it you
rself, solve it now.”

  “You’re basically asking me to disobey orders.”

  “Sniper Five,” said Memphis, in Washington Crisis, “you do what Cruz tells you, and if it comes to flak, you give them my name and I will swing for it, got that?”

  “Got it, yes sir,” said McElroy.

  “And you don’t know anything about this, Webley, if you’re listening.”

  “I never heard a thing, sir,” said Webley, who had been listening. “Now McElroy, get busy, you have work to do.”

  Ray put the phone away and tried to search out a retail outlet near the balcony where he could get into action if something happened, but he sensed a presence. Turning, his eyes met those of a jihadi gunman not three feet away. The man stared at him quizzically, and in the split second of stillness, Ray saw him trying to solve certain problems. Why, he had to be wondering, is this fellow here, in our uniform? Why is he not Somali? Who was he talking to?

  And then he and Ray leaped at each other.

  Dead Santa, atop his throne, gazed with sightless eyes upon the mortal anguish his passing signified. A woman on the other side of the crowd had also died, of a heart attack. There was a man near the Tilt-a-Whirl who was very, very close to death; he needed blood badly. One of the babies had started to cry and would not shut up. Everywhere, people were giving up or surrendering to bitterness and despair, trying to sneak last phone calls to tell relatives how much they loved them. Worst of all, the odors of colonic release filled the air. Generally it felt like the end of the world in the mass of hostages packed on the byways of the amusement park, dwarfed by the skeletal struts of various thrill rides, mocked by flappity-flapping banners and signs for refreshments and insane Christmas muzak from unstoppable speakers. “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright,” yadda yadda.

  But Mom had seen worlds end before and gotten through, so she was not upset. She held Sally close to her. She did not want Sally looking around, with her bright face and bright eyes. She knew the child’s charisma was like a beacon and that it attracted attention, the wrong kind.

  In her native language she prayed to Buddha for deliverance, but she also prayed for death to come to the filth that had engineered this thing. Everywhere she looked, she saw bleakness and turmoil. She continued to steal a handful of dirt into her bag every few minutes or so, as yet unnoticed, uncaught. It was just about time for another load.

  But then—

  Simultaneously two or three of the gun boys began to leap with what looked like joy and clap each other on the back. Then one pointed his rifle upward and jerked off a batch of shots while others pounded him raucously. A whisper ran through the crowd and it came to and blew over Mom and Sally.

  “There must be an agreement! We’ll be getting out of here soon! We just have to hold on a little longer!”

  Mom didn’t buy it, not for a second. She’d seen boys like these before: they loved their guns, their power, their uniforms too much. They had too little wisdom or imagination; they’d never felt responsibility. They were just children, really, and even if someone was directing them—no evidence, except in the earphones that suggested a leader somewhere addressing them and giving orders and instructions—they would behave like children, pointlessly, foolishly violent and cruel.

  Then a confirmation came. Someone with an iPhone had managed to call up CNN, which was reporting an agreement in the Minnesota standoff! This news flew through the crowd and was confirmed by other iPhoners faster than the first news. Now the optimism was palpable, the sense of relief. Oh, it was so good. Mom allowed herself to half believe, but her hard experience in the world still left her worried.

  Sally peeked up.

  “Mom, what is it?” she asked in Hmong.

  “Good news. They say we’ll be out of here in a bit, some kind of deal has been made.”

  “Thank God,” said Sally.

  “Sally, do not let yourself believe until it is true. Guard against feelings of gratitude and relief. It may still be a long, tragic day and you might still have to use all your skills to survive it.”

  Suddenly a shadow crossed them. Both looked up.

  The black man who’d shot the hostages and who’d bought Sally as his bride stood there, all insolence, pride, glee, his weapon resting casually on his shoulder. He smiled, white teeth showing brightly. Then he knelt down.

  “I will have my wedding night,” he said, “when the time is right. You will come to love me, and possibly when you give yourself to Maahir, Maahir will save you. The martyrs are cheering because they know that the killing is near.”

  The young man turned to the imam.

  “So can you watch the shop for a while?”

  “I’m sorry, what do you—”

  “Oh, nothing’s going to happen for a while. They’ll be driving the Kaafi boys to the airport, you’ll see, and then there’ll be the TV drama of the boarding and takeoff and all the talking heads will check in, and then we’ll move up to another game level on them. But meanwhile, I’ve got a little something to check. You can hang here. I’ll be back in a second.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He reached under his console and took out a plastic bag that could only contain a gas mask. Or another head. But it was a gas mask. He pulled it on carefully, making adjustments. Then he went to the console, armed himself with the mouse, dragged the cursor to SECURITY OFFICE, and clicked. The icon told him it was still remotely locked. He ordered UNLOCK.

  Then he rose, snatched up an AK, and left through the front door. It was only a quarter rotation around and there was no pedestrian traffic. A few windows had been broken, a few carriages abandoned, a few shoes lost. It had an after-the-zombie-apocalypse feeling he kind of liked, thank you, George Romero and all your clones. He passed the big, bright, deserted RealDeal that sold more TV sets than any other retail outlet in America, saw more zombie ruin inside but still utter stillness as all the trapped shoppers would presume him a killer and quake in their hiding places, and beyond that he came to the unmarked door that was the security office.

  Unlocked by computer fiat, it yielded to his push, admitting him to a tunnel that led to more heavy doors, and they too opened cheerfully.

  Inside: not pleasant.

  Six dead guys. Wrong place, wrong time, fellows, the way of the universe. He felt not a morsel of pity for them and—this was his gift or something—could not imagine them as men of families, with lives, relatives, kids, histories, contributions. They were just sort of repulsive in their twisted grotesqueness.

  He walked to a device of some mystery mounted on a wall. A small green bulb gleamed brightly. Oh, they think they’re so smart. Oh, they think they’ve got it figured. Some boy genius of the FBI or the NSA or the CIA, working away, he’d managed to connect with the system, thinking that Satan had forgotten something. Too bad for him. So it goes with the weak and virtuous.

  He smashed the green-lit modem two times with his rifle butt, the second driving the shattered plastic mechanism, its guts of circuits and wires and smashed plastic hanging out, to the floor.

  He was doing what he had always dreamed of. He was smashing the machine. In its tangled, ripped wiring, in its shattered plastic, in its broken solenoids, he saw the future.

  Ain’t it cool?

  TWO MONTHS EARLIER

  Mr. Reilly was baffled. The owner—actually, the FFL was still in his wife’s name, though she’d died three months earlier—of Reilly’s Sporting Goods and Surplus, in far suburban, nearly rural Twin Falls, Minnesota, he stared at the two crates, one quite large, one quite small, that rested on the UPS man’s freight dolly. He bent, saw the return address on the shipping label as WTI, Laredo, Texas, which he knew to be West Texas Imports, his supplier for low-end Eastbloc surplus military weapons, which he sold to working-class hunters and gun folks who couldn’t afford a big-ticket American deer rifle.

  About a hundred mounted animals witnessed the somewhat confused transaction between the old fellow and the man in
brown, and most of them had horns, though of course a few were badgers, ducks, even, whimsically, a groundhog noted for its sagacity and insight. Also on the cozy, wood-paneled walls: rifles, rifles, rifles, most bolt guns, a few ARs, a few shotguns. In the fluorescent-lit cabinets lay the handguns, gleaming, laid out neatly by someone who took the responsibility for display of merchandise and price, the bedrock of retail, seriously.

  “I just don’t see why it’s such a big crate,” he said to Wally, the UPS man.

  “Mr. Reilly, do you want to refuse it? No big deal, I’ll just dolly it back to the truck and we’ll return it.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Reilly, still a little foggy, “let’s ask Andrew.” He turned and called, “Andrew. Andrew!”

  Andrew stepped from the stockroom. He was a tall, thin young man in his early twenties, and he was the best thing that had come into Mr. Reilly’s life since Flora died. He was punctual, hardworking, entirely trustworthy, good with customers, reliable, and honest. He had a shock of blond hair and a fair complexion. He could have been any neighbor’s son, and it was his compulsion toward tidiness that had turned the store into such a masterpiece of organization.

  “He doesn’t understand why the WTI crate is so big,” said Wally.

  “Mr. Reilly, I’ll check it. Maybe it’s two or three orders in one.”

  “You don’t want to refuse it?” said Wally.

  “No, I guess not,” said Mr. Reilly. “Okay, Andrew?”

  “Yes sir. I’ll run it down through the computer records. They do make mistakes, but I think we did have an outstanding order on Chinese SKSes, and maybe this is them. Or maybe it’s them plus a duplicate order. Wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll straighten it out, and if it’s wrong, you can pick it up tomorrow, Wally.”